Price to Pay
by Eternal Hope is My Company
Summary: He never knew he would experience a reality where he would allow the most important person in his life to fall from the stars with no way out of their prison. And yet, that is what is happening to him now. Story written in the first person point of view and assisted suicide occurs in this story.


I stand there frozen in place, as if I had become a glacier amid an unknown sea. I watch as you keep apologizing with a smile that does not quite reach your eyes. I see the way your soul is trying to stretch out from your gaze to reach the other me. Just any attempt to grasp at something outside of your body. But, I find myself becoming stiff at the way the other me leaves you behind again. Claims to you that you just are slowing them down now. That you can no longer keep up with them.

What I hate the most is how I can understand maybe why they say that.

For in a literal sense, the other me walks across the desert ground free from restriction. You, however, are bound to a wheelchair with evidence of atrophied legs. Your arms no longer hold the same bulk they used to, but I can see the muscle bulge underneath your arms as you move the wheels of the chair forward. It is true the other me could out run you easily and your wheelchair, as archaic as they come with no engines or propellers to move on its own, would not be able to keep up.

Yet, I'm sure you picked that kind out for a reason. Anything to give you something to do. A grasp at independence slipping through your grasp like sand in an hourglass. And that is where I can see the figurative way you can't keep up with the other me.

Your eyes no longer hold that spark that lined your grey eyes most of the time. You try to keep it there when trying to convince yourself you are not holding anyone back. You attempt to hold on to that aspiring part of yourself even as you see the other me walk away. Your gaze that gave me a glimpse of the sky and made me believe we could go there together no longer existed. Like a shadow trying to become the self it intimates.

Your internal dying, that you tried to hide from me and everyone else, is finally slipping through without the medium of alcohol or the melancholy of trauma and unobtainable dreams to reveal it. You don't want to look that way because it means it truly is the end. But, you never were a blind optimist. You can't make yourself that, now can you? If only I could do that for you. This is not my place though and the me that belongs here has done something I never could imagine myself doing.

Abandoning you.

At least, it feels that way. I assume, hopefully, this me visits you and talks to you. Still attempts to have that bond we forged over time. The fact the other me has left you behind in front of what was once the house I lived in with you and Adam and how you are still alive…it must mean the other me never made the same promises I did.

For I like to think all mes keep to their word.

I dared to approach now once the other me had driven off. I swallow knowing there was no way this wouldn't cause confusion or puzzlement. As you turn to look at him though, I am stunned to see only a brief widening of eyes before you smile warmly at me.

"Keith, is that you? I thought you drove off."

That was when my eyes widened. Your arms worked, and I assume your upper body did. But, the disease struck in a way I was unprepared for.

Your eyes weren't dull just because you could no longer hide your darkened feelings. The disease had taken away your ability to see.

"Shiro…." I hated how tears slipped down my face. I wanted to walk over as confidently and smoothly as you did in the face of suffering. Seeing you though unable to tell I wasn't your Keith…I guess it was just too much for me. My legs carried me forward into a barreling run and I soon collided against your chest, my legs awkwardly doing their best to not knock me completely into your lap. I couldn't stop my arms wrapping tightly around your shoulder or the need to bury my face into your neck, breathe your scent into my nose even as tears and sobs escaped from me.

"Oh Keith…what's wrong? Did I upset you when I said that? I'm so sorry, baby." Your voice still sounded so melodious to me, soothing as well. I could still listen to you all day. Was it the inability to hear your voice or see you anymore the reason this other me hadn't dared make the same promise I did? I knew how heart-wrenching it was, other me, to swear to Shiro I would end his life before he got to a state of losing his independence. But, other me, how can you stand to see him like this when it feels like everything inside me is cracking?

"I know you're just hurting right now. I know you don't mean what you say. You're just…trying to deal with this as well as you can. As well as I can." Your hand rubbed soothing circles into my shoulder blades just like you did when I was a kid. It's like you truly are you no matter which reality I end up in. When we know each other, you're always there for me, in the same ways. Still defending me with each breath you take.

"Shiro…I'm so sorry." I pleaded, realizing it wasn't just to you I was asking forgiveness.

I wanted forgiveness from my Shiro for letting him die on the Black Lion. For not telling my Shiro before he died how much he meant to me. For not seeing I had rescued a clone and not him. I wanted my Shiro to forgive me as much as I wanted forgiveness from you for leaving you in this state.

"Oh Keith, there is nothing to be sorry about for I already forgive you." Your chapped lips brushed the top of my head. "I just have to learn to accept this is all."

I took a shaky breath and pulled back from you, staring at those lifeless grey eyes. "Shiro…you don't have to, you know." I took another shaky breath as I stood up, removing my arms from around his shoulders. "I can…end it for you." I said the same thing to you as I said to mine. You frowned just as he had. You swallowed just as he had. I swore even your breathing hitched the same way.

"Keith…I can't ask that of you." You frowned more and looked down at your hands. "I should be able to do it myself. I still have the use of my arms and hands." The wheelchair moved slightly as if trembling along with you. "Yet, I feel like I can't leave, you know? I feel you wouldn't be able to survive without me."

That was one line different from my Shiro. I finally took notice of how your hair was completely brownish black and you had both flesh arms. I trembled at realizing the other me never had to learn the feeling of you being gone. The other me had never lost you as I had. No wonder you would say such a thing because that meant I never got over the fear of abandonment. The fear of you leaving me too.

"I know it would be hard. Your loss would kill me more so than losing my dad. It would destroy me more than any other loss I could ever feel in the future." And I knew that now to be true. Your death ripped a hole in me that only healed once you returned from Kerberos, and the hole almost devoured me when I learned you had truly died. I'm not sure if it will ever heal if the clone body rejects you and you fade away like a ghost.

"But…" I dared to place my hands gently on your neck, applying no pressure but letting them linger there against your skin. "Seeing you like this, unable to help you? To see you wither away into someone that you aren't? I'm not sure I can live with that as my final image of you."

"Keith…" Your voice trembled now as I felt your hands resting on top of mine. "Are you sure? Are you really sure…about giving me permission? I don't think I can change my mind on this once I know I can. That this will be better than watching me eventually leave you anyway."

I nodded. But, then I chuckled bitterly. I forgot you couldn't see. "Yes, I'm sure." I applied just a bit of pressure to your neck. "And I'll help you…because I know the main reason you haven't done this already." I rested my forehead against yours and dared to pluck at a secret in your heart I only assumed to be true. "You're scared of dying alone because you believe there might not be anything after this. And that if you die alone, then you won't be able to say your last goodbyes or anything. You would just fade away into nothing with all of your regrets and not a single way to get rid of any of them."

When your hands gripped mine tighter, I thought maybe I was right.

"…It's not just that. You can't control when you are going to die. Sometimes you must die alone. I know that much." You added on with a small smile on your face. "It's that I hate to leave you, Keith. All alone again." Your breathing became shaky as I found the tears flooding down my face again and my heart truly cracking into thousands of pieces. "You've made me so happy, Keith. I don't wish for you to be alone. I don't wish for you to be unhappy. I thought…that maybe if I could just hold out a bit longer…if maybe they could find a cure…you wouldn't have to lose me."

"I know." I blurted out feeling all the warmth and love from you flooding into me. "Because you love me that much. But please…let me go. Let yourself go. I'm a big man now, remember? I'll never forget what you taught me. I will learn to let others in. I will find a way forward without you, Shiro. I swear it."

Your warm smile actually reaching your eyes was worth knowing what was about to happen.

"Thank you, Keith. You have always been such a sweetheart."

And that was when your hands squeezed mine tightly and therefore caused me to start squeezing your neck tightly.

For a brief moment, I found myself wanting to kiss you. Because I never got a chance to kiss my Shiro. But, I held myself back. Such a selfish desire in the middle of helping you die was a sin in of itself. Yet, I swore just as I felt your hands start to lose their grip on mine, that something chapped brushed against my lips. Yet, I didn't dare check because my eyes were clenched shut.

"Thank…you."

Your last words echoed in my head as you slumped forward in your wheelchair. I gripped you, so you wouldn't fall out of the chair. I wiped at my eyes and steeled my heart. Your body was there, but your soul was not there anymore. I could only pray there was an afterlife where you could rest and exist with no illness at all.

I picked you up from the wheelchair using my strength. If only you got to see how strong I was now that I could pick you up. I carried you quietly to a place where I figured you would want to be buried and started to work on your makeshift grave.

Yet, before I could finish it, I felt someone gripping my shoulders tightly.

"Keith! Come back to us!"

Allura's voice rang in my ears just as everything blacked out and I could only assume your body was left there, lying on the desert ground yet able to stare up into the starry sky we both loved so much.

Knowing that gave me comfort as I woke up, hoping to whatever might be out there that the other me would understand what I had done. That I willingly bore the blood that should have been on his hands.

All because no matter the reality, you would always be my Shiro. My love. My everything. And I would do anything for you, even be your accomplice in your own self-inflicted murder. All for you.


End file.
